Hearing "Monster Battler" just makes everything sound one-note to me personally. Makes it seem like it'll be an auto-battler style game with minimal player input, which I think gives people the very wrong idea of what the Monster Taming genre could be. At the end of the day, most Monster Taming games will have some kind of battle system, each with their own takes on the formula, ie: Temtem's Stamina bars and Double Battle focus, or Cassette Beasts fusion gameplay and customizable movesets. It's hard to get out from under the shadow of Pokémon, and while I don't believe we necessarily NEED to reinvent the wheel, we do need to tweak things and make them distinct somehow. As you well know after our interview, (Enigmon Dev), I've mentioned that this is exactly my plan for Enigmon. Taking what already works well, adding to it, tweaking some things, and trying to make a slightly more engaging and compelling battle system without steering too far in the wrong direction and making it unwieldy and unfun.
Yes, I've been trying to encourage indie developers to focus on the game mechanics that players actually like and then add their own creative twists to stand out.
Love that you featured Ova Magica and a small screenshot of boba bay! Not sure where the discourse is coming from. I agree with you, but I am starting to feel that many monster 'battlers' aren't creative enough; I'm a bit tired of seeing pokemon's battle system copied over and over. I appreciate games like Temtem that made battling more strategic, and Games like Ova Magica for combining it into a genre that makes it unique gameplay
I definitely understand what you are saying, it could be from a lack of creativity or from a lack of coding knowledge. In my own case, my main hindrance is my lack of coding knowledge but I'm optimistic.
This is a fair assessment of the monster tamer genre and the topic of discussion. I do think Pokemon plot focused on battling a bit much. You’re literally always a Pokemon trainer going after gym badges and beating the elite four in every single main series game, no matter what happens on the side. This focus is directly tied to the battle style, so when new monster tamers takes that same battle style into what’s supposed to be something new and refreshing, it brings with it that stigma of being focused on battling, regardless of plot. This is one of those things that inadvertently works against a game devs attempt to have a game mechanic play a role in the story. Psychologically, using Pokémon’s battle style focuses the players mind on battling. It’s easy, but it comes with that major con, in my opinion. That’s also why I’m personally returning to the classic rpg style for my monster tamer with a decent enough twist to be refreshing, but we’ll see how it lands. It’s inspired by magic the gathering and I can only hope it does the job. lol
Not just that but games that can't be classified as monster battlers would lose the category of their main appeal. Monster Sanctuary barely have any battles(the battles are just boss fights and pvp) and little to no inspirations from pokémon, but it can't be reduced to a metroidvania because the main appeal is to tame the monsters. Megami Tensei, which invented the genre would also be reduced to just a JRPG because it doesn't have any battles, even knowing it's not the main appeal of the game.
1:48 I'm not advocating for the same name change as was originally made. However I would like to state that this actually a prerequisite, a requirement of the style of game that was being talked about in the original video/post. You see it's kind of like you say the type of game being talked about IS at it's core a virtual/digital pet game. I made a comment talking about this on the og video and might do so on both reddit threads. The person the made the og post is asking for more what most would now call 'monster raising' games and most other of the community is trying to understand where this new definition of taming is coming is coming from. BUT this type of game infact does actually already exist, even if it is rather rare to find. If one takes into account all definitions of taming, including this new extended version that would really just be understood as raising and training, what you get is more of a simulation style than something like pokemon. Something like Harvestmoon, Animal Crossing, ActRaiser, Populous or even the SMT/Persona series. The problem this person has is that there are very few monster-taming games with v-pets at the core. And going by the collective definition (that again includes actually taming as understood historically, culturally, by definition and this new one from the og poster), the only ones I know of being Digimon World (1) and the Sonic Adventure games (06 and others too). I haven't played Slime Rancher but maybe someone can vouch for that being one as well. And Bobo Bay seems to be one but it's not released yet. By this definition there are plenty of monster games even within the simulation genre that ignore this monster raising aspect for something else to some degree. The Sonic games are a perfect example of that as they are more focused on platforming than monster raising. The SMT/Persona games are JRPGS with more socail and dating sim focus and basically neglect the raising of monsters for collecting and battling with them instead. Monster Rancher is actually a life simulation game focused on monsters just not catching them. This would extend all the way to pokemon as it is a monster collecting JRPG without a simulation aspect. I just wanted to state that as things stand currently these kinds of games on some level do require v-pets at their core. As the game is really about working together with a partner you can't exactly read and predict the actions of to achieve some goal. The og poster seems more hung up on the raising of monsters and terminology of the genre parts... From what I can tell, however that's beyond me. But as some that wants a similar game, this is what I believe they are really going on about.
It makes more sense to promote the term "Monster Raising" for the people who want those specific game mechanics than to change how "monster tamer" is used in discussion and search. "Monster Tamer" is already being used as an umbrella term like "creature collector."
@@TheOFCMedia I entirely agree with this. It is as you state in the video, the Monster Taming genre can be expanded upon. And pushing these kinds of games as Monster Raising games instead of Monster Taming games would most definitely help with that. But trying to redefine the term "taming" as something else defeats that purpose. And it is something that all developers should take time to think about when they are making a game like this.
Um.. globally, the genre has many terms. "Monster Taming Games" "Monster Raising Games" "Monster Collecting Games" "Monster Battlers" You can find the same type of games by googling any of those ^^; They all pretty much the same at least.
I'm well aware of this. This video was a response to people who were in support of a rearranging of how terms are used in favor of games with heavier virtual pet game features.
This video is a response to people who were saying that it would be a good idea to only apply the term "monster taming" to games that had features that are common in virtual pet games such as feeding your pets and taking care of their physical needs.
